Enforcement of the Packers & Stockyards Act

The proposal by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to establish rules to finally enforce the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act is a critical step to strengthening the American free enterprise system in livestock production.

Vilsack would require a meatpacker that offers a premium to one seller for volume, quality, or any other factor to also offer the same premium to any other producer or group of producers that meets the same condition. It’s a fair and reasonable approach. But the reaction from the meatpackers and mega-livestock interests has been anything but reasonable. They have charged the proposed rules would end premiums for quality, a claim that is false on its face. Purchases of livestock on a grade and yield basis or other measures of quality applied consistently to a packer’s customers have the clear blessing of this proposal.

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